


The Neighbors Will Talk

by theweddingofthefoxes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fox!Hux, M/M, Mind Games, Modern AU, Rough Sex, dubcon, in like....a psychological way?, spooky things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9306125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweddingofthefoxes/pseuds/theweddingofthefoxes
Summary: Ren has stayed in the cabin in the woods where Hux lives, but now, Hux has asked to come for a visit to the suburbs where Ren lives.The neighbors think they know Ren, but it's entirely possible they do not.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _I know who I am when I'm alone_   
>  _Something else when I see you_   
>  _You don't understand, you should never know_   
>  _How easy you are to need_
> 
>  
> 
> Hozier, "It Will Come Back"
> 
>  
> 
> A companion piece to [Shiver The Whole Night Through](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8765749/chapters/20093026).

He had mentioned it just in passing, to just a few people. The neighbor in the townhouse to the right of his, whose mail he'd been grabbing since she broke her leg trying to catch a cab while on a business trip in New York City, and the neighbors in the one on the left, who had a six-year-old and were expecting a new baby in two month's time and whom he had helped carry in a crib as a surprise present from the husband to the wife. Just having a friend from out of town stay over, he'd said, when asked, the way neighbors do, what Ren was doing over the weekend.

He was liked among the people in the neighborhood. He was neither so outgoing that it was obnoxious, an invasion of privacy; nor was he sullen or withdrawn or spooky, unknown, cryptic. He was simply a man who minded his own business but was always polite and friendly and ready to help out. Word was that he had moved across the country to get away from his family. He had friends over sometimes but they were never particularly obtrusive.

Sometimes a cab would drop him home if he was too drunk to drive, around 2 am, but usually he was the one who ferried his friends around after a night out. He planted sunflowers out back in the summer. 

He liked bad TV shows and good wine and hunting. 

That's what the neighbors knew.

It was the end of March and it seemed as though winter would never end. Warm afternoons would give way to steely skies, cold rain, bitter winds at night. Cuddle weather, the girl across the street insisted to her boyfriend as he turned the heat up with a harrumph. The neighborhood kids were allowed out in short spurts before being called back inside, their cheeks ruddy and their shoes slicked with watery mud. 

Ren had left early on Friday morning and returned that evening, around dinnertime. The husband who lived to Ren's left was just accepting a bag of Chinese food from the delivery woman when Ren pulled back onto his parking pad, and there was a stranger in the passenger seat. Around Ren's age, thin, wiry, red-headed guy. The husband tipped the woman more than he'd planned--she'd gotten there ten minutes ahead of schedule--and shut the door. 

Two girls, first-graders, were playing on the sidewalk as Ren went around to open up the car door for his guest, almost like a date. The girls hopped in the puddles, trying to splash one another's ankles. 

"Can we play with Butterscotch?"

"My mom says we can play with her outside when the weather is nicer."

"What about inside your house?"

"No, cause she might pee on the carpet."

"Ew!"

The girls laughed, then one of them--she was the daughter of the expectant couple next door, taking advantage of playtime before being called in for dinner--called hello. "Hi, Mr. Ren! Hi Mr. Ren's friend!"

The friend cocked his head, uncertain.

"Where's your jacket?" one of the girls asked.

"He's not cold," Ren said. "But uh, listen to your moms if they say wear a jacket. When you're a grownup you can do whatever you like, okay?"

He turned the key in the lock and ushered his friend inside, his broad hand pressed to the small of his friend's back. 

 

 

"There are so many of you here," Hux said, standing awkwardly in the doorway as Ren peeled off his jacket and hung it on the end on the stairway's banister. 

"Yeah, it's the suburbs," Ren said, knowing the term meant nothing to him. "It's safe for people to live together like this. It's a safe neighborhood. Little kids can go out and play, and that kind of thing."

He approached Hux, gently pressed his fingers into Hux's shoulders. "Is it a shock?"

"Mmhm." Hux nuzzled him. "I see humans all the time, but only in pairs or threes. Not so....many. And it's so exposed out here."

It had occurred to Ren that bringing Hux to his home for the weekend might not be a great idea. The drive back wasn't horribly long, but they'd had to keep stopping because Hux had been so restless and carsick. He'd thrown up twice. A couple of times, when Ren assured him no one was around to see, he'd taken his other form and run around with a kind of manic, confused energy before becoming a man again, panting and resigned to getting back into the car. By the time they'd come back off the country roads, surrounded by Panera Breads and gas stations and tennis courts, Hux was looking a little bit afraid. 

Was this a bad idea?

But Hux had insisted. Had wanted to enter Ren's space. Wanted, as always, to be let in. Ren fascinated him, he'd said. He thought about Ren all the time. Haunted the cabin, waiting for him to return. Dates meant nothing to Hux, so Ren had had to explain when he'd be would return in terms of the seasons changing, the length of days. In February, when Ren had come back(or, as he'd told Hux, after the moon had cycled twice), Hux had told him how he'd dreamed of him, had wanted to see his space, enter his world. 

And Ren had said yes.

"We won't go out anywhere. We'll stay in. The weather's supposed to be bad, anyway."

Hux drew back slightly, just enough so he could meet Ren's eyes, and smiled for the first time since they got in the car that afternoon.

"This whole place smells of you. It's dizzying."

"In a good way?"

Hux's eyes flashed. "Oh, yes."

 

 

Ren's friend seemed a bit odd, the passing neighbors thought when they saw him at the bay window of Ren's living room, where they watched television. He stared, and at first it seemed blank, but that was because his eyes were so large and the lower half of his face was expressionless. It was a stare of intense curiosity, of almost paranoid vigilance. He was in motion a lot. He wore a flannel shirt that is a little bit too big for him, so only the tips of his narrow white fingers peek out from the sleeves. When Ren looked at him, he looks dazed with happiness. He looked like a man enchanted, bewitched, charmed past the point of return. 

 

 

"Are there animals around us?" Hux asked, late that first night. It was never fully dark around here, with the porch lights on, and the cars that occasionally passed by, throwing their shadows along the wall that was decorated with album covers that Ren liked--Yellow Submarine, Led Zeppelin IV, Nashville Skyline. 

Ren turned down the volume on the show they were watching, which had absorbed Hux fully--a nature show about whales, which were like unimaginable extraterrestrials to Hux. "Hm?"

"I smell something."

"It's a bit of a zoo outside," Ren said. "A few houses down, she's got a big blueberry bush and the deer and squirrels and everything come and eat from it all the time."

"Do you shoot them here?" Hux asked. 

"What? God, no. The neighbors would pitch a fit. So many kids around. It's different in the country. Besides, these animals are so desensitized to people, it'd be like cheating. I'm always about an inch away from hitting deer with my car."

Hux ran his tongue along his teeth in a way that might have been subconscious or might not. The screen had switched to the shore, where a whale carcass had washed up, and wolves were coming to take a bite of jellied flesh. 

"This might be a good place for me, then."

"Sure, sure. Plenty of prey. Things to catch."

"Like you," Hux said, teasing.

"Like me, yes." Ren placed a kiss on Hux's neck. Once upon a time, the fox's presence had seemed disturbing, spooky, unearthly....but that felt like such a long time ago, even though it was less than half a year. How could he have been frightened of such a beautiful creature? 

"You are _mine_ ," Hux whispered to him as Ren continued kissing, down his neck, down to his collarbone, around his shoulder. "Mine, my human, my prize."

"Mmm," Ren agreed, not stopping.

"Mine."

Ren turned off the TV and the room went as dark as it could ever get, and any of the neighbors looking in the bay window would see only shadows, moving with desperate precision, undulating beneath the blanket that was normally draped across the back of the sofa, and even then they would have to have their noses pressed to the glass in order to see anything at all.

 

 

The husband next door nearly hit a fox when he left for work on Saturday morning--he was the district manager for all the Starbucks in the area, and he had to deal with allegations that an employee was stealing out of her coworker's purse. He was used to early hours, weekend hours, but he had to admit he wasn't fully awake and nearly flattened the thing. Half of him felt only irritation--the deer around here were bad enough, now foxes too?--but the other half of him marveled at seeing something so beautiful up close. Fur like gold, or fire, just _gleaming_ in the pink-tinted dawn. 

The fox gave him a look, almost like disdain-- though of course he was anthropomorphizing--and then ran off into the darkness. 

 

 

"What happens to the woods when you're gone?" Ren had asked Hux, when they lay panting on the couch in the dark of the night. 

Hux ran his hand through Ren's hair. "Everyone who lives there feels a little safer, don't they?"

 

 

For breakfast, Ren made bacon. Waited to serve it before he was sure it was cool. He liked it dark-cripsy but it made Hux cough and spit it out, saying it tasted like the fireplace. But the juicy pieces filled him with delight, and he snapped them all down before Ren could return with water for them to drink. Hux held the water glass with both hands, like a toddler. 

"You said you've seen lots of people before, just in small groups," Ren said, taking a sip of water. "Have you ever...?"

Hux ran a finger along the room of his own glass, delicate. 

"Fucked them? No."

"Have they ever seen you as a human?"

"Yes. But they didn't know who I was. Just like you didn't."

Ren broke his bacon into little crumbs, like the kind that go on top of a salad, while he formulated his next question.

"So why me, then?"

He thought Hux might hesitate, or laugh, or be confused by the question, but instead he got an immediate answer, bright eyed, his gaze unabashed. 

"Because you're more beautiful than any other intruder I've ever seen."

 

 

Ren was far later than normal in delivering the mail to his neighbor because he and Hux had been fucking, recovering from fucking, kissing, or napping for the entire day. Hux was enthusiastic to the point of violence, raking his nails all over Ren's skin, drawing blood, letting out the most awful gorgeous snarls, but no one had ever sucked his cock before and at first he didn't understand the appeal--only at first though, he was an easy convert, and with Ren's wide hands on his thighs, hardly capable of speech, he saw the light. 

"Now you'll do me," Ren said, and it was not a question because he was riding some dark high, knowing the effect he had on--on whatever Hux was. "I want to see what you learned."

Hux smiled, and it was clear he had bitten his lip so hard that it had broken the skin of his lip.

Predator! Bloody mouth--hunter--

"Now," Ren said. "Now."

That wicked bleeding mouth on him was intoxicating, and Hux was, as the stories always said, clever like a fox, learning by example, and Ren takes a cruel pleasure in the way Hux has to suddenly figure out how to breathe around the length of his cock, how he sputters a bit, chokes, as Ren takes a fistful of that copper hair and does not let go. 

"Sorry about the delay," Ren told his neighbor later, when they had both stepped free of their haze. Things always seemed kind of unreal when Hux was around. Time seemed to pass differently. It was almost dark by the time Ren threw on a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt he'd gotten from the bowling alley where he worked in college that still somehow fit and ran out to the mailbox.

"Oh, honey. I didn't even notice." She gestured out to the hallway with her crutch. "My sister took me to the doctor's today for a follow-up, and when I came home, I saw my trash had just fallen over, God knows how. A bitch to clean up with my leg like this, but anyway, I wasn't worried about the mail."

"Oh, God. You should have called me," Ren said, knowing perfectly well he wouldn't have picked up, not with his mouth full of Hux's cock, he wouldn't have even heard the phone chime. "I'd have helped you."

"Ren, really, it's not your job to look after me. The mail is more than enough. And it's nice to feel independent enough to at least clean up a mess."

A fluke. A fluke. But no, it's not. Ren knows exactly what happened to that garbage. 

 

 

When Ren returned to his own home, Hux was curled up on the bed, playing with the Slinky Ren had found in a drawer. "Play with this til I get back," Ren had said and it seemed Hux had obeyed.

"Did you get into the neighbor's house?" Ren asked.

Hux didn't take his eyes off the Slinky, which he was stretching as far as it could go before letting it snap back into shape. 

"I can smell things I want over there," he said, apparently deciding it was no use to lie but not exactly ashamed of himself, either. 

"That's not--you can't just--"

Hux shook the Slinky so it made a soft metallic rustling sound. "It's harder, without permission. But the smell was so strong."

"You can't just go into people's houses and dump out their garbage, Jesus." Ren hated the jagged edge of his voice, but couldn't help it. 

Hux sat up in bed, looking Ren straight in the eye. 

"There is no force on Earth that can stop me from doing anything I want to," he said, quietly, mildly, a little bit dreamily, the way he always spoke. 

Ren rubbed his forehead, hard.

"This isn't what I brought you here for."

"No," Hux said, crawling across the bed, the Slinky abandoned, so he could approach Ren, touch his face, cup his chin. "You brought me here because I wanted to come here."

"You always get what you want," Ren said, and it was an accusation, and it was not one that Hux denied. Instead he nuzzled Ren's face with his nose, soft, loving.

"But I want you to be happy," Hux said. "I want you to love me. I want you to want me and touch me and I want you to..." He nipped Ren's ear, just hard enough to make him gasp. "I want you to understand that I will simply do as I like. I'm not like humans, Ren. I'm not limited the same way."

He leaned in even closer, how that was possible, Ren did not know, but it happened, and his kisses were so soft and his eyes were so wide and lovely that Ren's heart stung.

"Oh," Ren said. "Oh, God. I want to do those things too, Hux. I want to understand."

"Do you love me? Tell me you love me."

It seemed so impossible that at one time, Ren was prepared to kill him, wanted to kill him, steal his skin, steal his life, overpower him. Though of course that would never have happened, no matter how hard he tried. Hux was simply too... too smart? Too sneaky? Too powerful? Ren had never imagined there was anyone more powerful than a hunter in the woods. But the word _hunter_ , it seemed, was subject to interpretation.

"I love you, Hux."

"You love me."

"Yes."

"And I love you."

Hux's breath warmed Ren's ear. "And we caught each other, yes?" 

"Yes. Yes."

Like two beasts that had one another by the tail. 

 

 

On Sunday, Ren took Hux home, and when they walked outside, it was cold and raw and the first few raindrops had begun to fall, though the Weather Channel had been hopeful about the possibility of sunshine starting on Tuesday. The little neighbor girl was on her porch crying, her face buried in her mother's swollen stomach. 

"It's okay, honey, I'm sure we'll find Butterscotch. He probably just got out of his cage and is around here somewhere. We have to get going to church now, okay? Maybe he'll be back when we get home."

Hux did not even flick his eyes over towards them, just let Ren open the car door for him. 

Ren purposely made a day of the drive, taking it slow and steady so Hux didn't get sick. They stopped at a scenic overlook, perched above a rolling glade of conifers, and Hux took Ren's hand, swinging it contentedly. Pecked him on the cheek and then took his fox form, ran off for a minute or two.

"Would you be able to make it back from here, as a fox?" Ren asked.

"Sure. It'd be a lot slower, though. Your cars are so much faster." Hux laughed. "But I can find my way back to anywhere I've been."

It was a statement full of possibility. 

"When will you come back to me?" Hux asked.

"When it gets warm out."

"And you'll stay in the cabin?"

"Unless you want to come back to my place again."

"The cabin is more private."

"Anything you'd like. Anything you want."

They got back in the car and began the long crawl back to the cabin in the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> Fox!Hux has a tendency to make things a bit.....unreal. Who knows how much influence he has over Ren's head or heart. (Hence the tag for dubcon.)
> 
> Maybe they're in love. Maybe not.


End file.
